Leading teacher learning: the networked middle leader of professional development model

While the value of teacher professional development is widely recognised, middle leaders who oversee it remain under-examined. Recent conceptualisations of middle- and teacher-leaders conveying information flow pave the way for a more specialised consideration of school-based professional development leaders (PDLs), including leadership preparation, roles enactment, and professional growth. This paper presents a secondary analysis of data from an initiative involving 40 English schools. Each school identified a PDL to lead professional development. We analysed PDLs’ reports, using codebook thematic analysis based upon existing models, to understand how the PDLs learned about and enacted their roles. We propose a model comprising three supporting structures: a middle leader community of practice, boundary-crossing facilitators and internal feedback loops. Individually and in combination these structures enable PDLs’ leadership practices, supporting the flow of information. Our study provides a new understanding of the importance of networked practices in support of PDLs’ roles and synthesises findings to offer a model that can be employed to support middle leaders of teacher professional development.